The Influences of Misinformation on Incidences of Politically Motivated Violence in Europe

Abstract

Misinformation has become increasingly prevalent in online media. Transnational misinformation, in particular, poses an increasing threat to the security and stability of modern nation-states. To this end, at least some anecdotal evidence suggests a direct relationship between misinformation and domestic acts of politically motivated violence. Yet, such claims lack systematic empirical evidence, especially as it relates to transnational misinformation. To address this, this paper analyzes the effects of transnational misinformation on several distinct forms of domestic political violence across Europe, sharpening our empirical understanding of the purported association between misinformation and political violence. This is achieved through the fusion of a fine-grained spatial-temporal dataset of confirmed instances of news-based misinformation with daily event data on incidents of political conflict. These combined data are analyzed using a variety of statistical techniques for the period covering January 2016–May 2022. Findings imply a positive association between transnational misinformation and several forms of political violence in Europe. Furthermore, this association is more reliable for civilian-to-government violence events than for violence between civilian actors. Altogether this paper accordingly provides novel and nuanced empirical evidence for the pernicious effects of transnational misinformation on political violence.